Technology

IBM Packed Insane 201GB Data Into Just One Square Inch of Tape

It is not a comeback; tape’s been here for years and now after a significant breakthrough delivered by IBM and Sony Storage Media Solutions it’s not likely to go away anytime soon.

What IBM and Sony managed to do is stuff 201 gigabits of uncompressed data into a single square inch of media they call “sputtered tape.” That’s a new record, one that nearly doubles the previous high. IBM was responsible for that one, too, hitting 123gb/in² just two short years ago.One of the advances IBM made was reducing the track width. The record from 2015 was achieved with a track width of just 140 nanometers. They reduced that figure by nearly 30%, down to an incredible 103 nanometers.

IBM says it’s going to be more expensive to produce sputtered tape than the tape used in, say, today’s LTO cartridges, but its worth every penny. They believe that its “potential for very high capacity will make the cost per terabyte very attractive.” Cloud service providers looking for the best cold storage option available for their data will be very interested in this new tech.

It is also been reported that IBM managed to stuff 330TB of data onto a single cartridge, that’s hasn’t exactly happened. Not yet, anyway, but IBM says that’s where they’re headed. By the time sputtered tape cartridges are ready for sale, says IBM tape scientist Dr. Mark Lantz, you should indeed be able to pack that much data onto just one cart.

Probably, a 2 Petabyte autoloader won’t be a very far fetch idea, which is great news for companies which are crying for more cheap storage for us and for our insignificant of interactions we make with their apps.